Consultant moves into the front lines as CEO of Pershing Advisor Solutions. Mark Tibergien is leaving Moss Adams to become CEO of Pershing's Advisor Solutions (PAS) unit. The clearing firm characterizes the top-slot appointment of Tibergien, a leading strategic consultant to the independent-advisory space, as part of an on-going campaign, initiated several years ago, to strengthen its hand in the RIA custody business.

"Mark is a renowned expert in his field, and his knowledge and broad range of experience will help us to take further advantage of the significant opportunities in the RIA marketplace," says Pershing's chairman and CEO Richard Brueckner. "His expertise will guide us as we continue to deliver innovative products, services, practice-management support and technology solutions to meet the complex needs of this important market segment."

Natural

Tibergien, who starts at Jersey City, N.J.-based Pershing next month, will report to Brueckner and to Pershing COO Brian Shea. Brueckner has been filling in as CEO of PAS with assistance from the unit's COO John Iachello, who will remain in that role as a report to Tibergien.

Though he has been a business consultant since 1973, Tibergien says he comes to the top job at PAS fresh from helming Seattle-based Moss Adams' business-consulting practice -- and that his new job once again calls equally on his skills as a business manager and an industry consultant. "This" -- and by "this" he means his new role -- "is a natural evolution for my career and for [PAS]," he adds.

Tibergien has been closely involved as an outside consultant in the transformation of Pershing's RIA-support business over the past two and a half years -- long enough, he says, to give him confidence in "the things [Pershing is] saying and doing" to improve its services to RIAs. Now, he says, his familiarity with the unit's "culture, people and processes" will help him and his PAS colleagues "stir up the market with provocative thinking" and establish an "open and healthy dialogue with advisors about the business."

Pershing has been providing outsourced services to RIAs since the early 1990s, but it easn't a priority until 2005. That's when the clearing firm kicked off a campaign to "broaden" its "strategic focus" on RIAs by changing the name of its "Investment Manager Services" unit to "Pershing Advisor Solutions."

Double play

Since then PAS has more than tripled its headcount (from 40 or so to around 140), improved its technology (especially around support for dually registered advisors), expanded its investment platform, and rolled out a fairly comprehensive suite of business-consulting services.

PAS has about $73 billion in assets under administration. That puts it behind Schwab Institutional, Fidelity RIA Group and TD Ameritrade Institutional in those terms at least. But the Pershing unit seems to have emerged as the custodian of choice for dually-registered advisors, according to Alois Pirker, a senior analyst with the Boston-based business consultancy Aite Group.

And a surprisingly high percentage of RIAs -- 44% according to a recent Aite survey of 78 RIAs -- are dual registrants.

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Perhaps even more significant to PAS' prospects, these "hybrids" see twice as much asset growth in store through 2008 as pure-play RIAs do.

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Pershing is a subsidiary of Bank of New York Mellon. -FWR

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